Lia Williams and Adam Arnold in Mike Bartlett's “My Child” at the Royal Court. London theater: Staging, and watching, mostly what's comfortable
By Matt Wolf
Published: May 22, 2007
LONDON:
What's happened to danger in the theater - the frisson that arises when you find yourself pushed in directions, or perhaps moved to a degree you had not thought possible? It may be that audiences no longer crave such experiences. Consider, for starters, the failure on Broadway of “Journey's End,” the British director David Grindley's revival of a World War I drama that ran well over a year in London only to hit the stone wall of New York audiences not willing to pay top dollar (or, it would seem, any dollar) for a play about as far as is humanly possible from escapist fare. Or, in London, the occasional thin houses for Anthony Page's remarkable London stage premiere of Edward Albee's “The Lady From Dubuque,” a witty and bruising play so directly concerned with mortality that death's emissary is the title character, as played at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, by an exceedingly lively Maggie Smith.
Full article here: Source